March 15, 2019 - Week in Ethereum News

Mar 16, 2019

News and Links

Layer 1

Latest issue of what’s new in eth2
Beacon chain spec v0.5
Latest Eth2.0 implementer call. Agenda to follow along.
Wire protocol for Eth2 from Whiteblock
Nimbus dev update: sim progress, speed optimizations, beginnings of fork choice and a wire protocol implementation
Prysmatic dev update: LMD Ghost fork, e2e testing tool, Sparse Merkle trie tools for validator post activation
Yeeth dev update: libp2p implementation, BLS, spec contributions
Eth2 data visualizer built at EthParis
Piper Merriam on serialization options in Eth2
protolambda’s eth2 state transition function in Go
Validator economics in Eth2, part 2
Jacek Sieka’s beacon chain in practice explainer
Hsiao-Wei’s “life of a beacon chain validator” slides

Layer 2

Connext’s DaiCard launches on mainnet. Instant Dai payments over state channels. Limited to $30 right now as it is still beta.
Matter Labs is working to implement a Sonic SNARK structure (ie, no trusted setup) with first benchmarks at ZK Summit in a week
Cryptostaw - “decentralized Venmo” built on Matic Network/Plasma. Live on Kovan.
Enuma enumerates on its trustless exchange and SDK
Pisa: Vision for Off-chain and Non-Custodial Smart Contract Networks. Patrick McCorry’s survey of layer 2 and how a 3rd party watchtower helps them reach full potential.

Stuff for developers

Ecosystem

What is Burner Wallet and what is xDai? explainer. Also, the Helena prediction markets platform moved to xDai
Taylor Monahan: the impossible balance between security and usability
Kent Barton: scaling civility. Also: Aya Miyaguchi’s statement on community values.
Submissions from ETHParis and EthUofT. My favorite was Marius van der Wijden’s GPU Snark - 148x speedup on the Fast Fourier Transform part of the proof

Enterprise

Oaken Innovations/Brisa/ViaVerde on MOBI prizewinner Vento. Tokenized euro on Ethereum/Quorum for tolling, parking, etc
Middle East real estate developer Emaar planning to sell a token for “full referral and loyalty system across the entire group”
Air cargo billing, costing and reconciliation system. Article doesn’t say but since blockchain = Ethereum, it was built on Ethereum

Governance and Standards

Application layer

The 2019 season of Major League Crypto Baseball: player performance will influence how often the player is minted. They’re also moving everyday gameplay actions offchain.
Veil now lets you create your own markets
Melon: goodbye Melonport, hello world
Spankchain 2019 plans: private shows, international models, accepting credit cards, video purchasing.

Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks

Tokens / Business / Regulation

SEC Chairman Clayton agrees with Hinman’s statement outlining why Eth is not a security
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy calls for US Congressional transparency using blockchain
Fred Wilson on Decentralized Finance, though he only got into the very basics of DeFi activity.
Interesting analysis of LAND markets in Decentraland
Short selling in bonding curves

General

Joe Lubin: in 2 years, Ethereum will handle millions of transactions per second
Gitcoin is doing another $50,000 grant matching program
Starkware: Arithmetization II
Trustlines Network is rebooting as a proof of stake sidechain to Ethereum
Mainnet hub of Cosmos launches
Omise’s Go.exchange soft launched
MyEtherWallet launches EthVM block explorer. Ropsten only at the moment.
“Hunting Huobi scams” Harry’s writeups of phishing attacks are always interesting

Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):

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